Cutthroat Island -

Mediocre pirate action flick. Geena Davis is the pirate Morgan Adams, hunting down her grandfather’s fabled treasure. The treasure map was divided in three and divided among her father and her two uncles. Of course, one of her evil uncles (Frank Langella) has his eyes set on completing his map and gaining the treasure for himself. Morgan buys a former con artist, now a slave (Matthew Modine), to translate the latin text on her father’s third of the map. In their adventures, they manage to destroy several taverns, towns and a ship or two. The action scenes range from the routinely predictable (a horse and carriage chase through town), to the grandly spectacular (a cannon battle between rival pirate ships). The dialogue is mostly tongue-in-cheek, with many more double entendres than necessary, and some of the time seems strikingly out of place. Geena Davis seems woefully miscast, and she and Modine never truly seem to connect. Frank Langella, however, tackles his pirate character with relish, enlivening a routine villain. There are no drastic plot twists, everything turns out pretty much as expected. The action scenes are really all that are worth watching in the film, and even they won’t linger after the film ends.